Overnight, a pumpkin patch sprang up on a church lawn across the street from Brevard College. Dozens of people come through on a daily basis to pick out the perfect pumpkin to take home and turn into a jack-o'-lantern for Halloween. Pumpkins are the symbol of fall aren't they? In addition to jack-o'-lanterns, they can be converted to wonderful pies, soups, or roasted vegetables. So are they fruits or vegetables? Several people have asked me.
Fall is harvest time for humans and animals alike. While we thresh wheat, crack walnuts, pick pumpkins, make jelly, and can beans, animals are also busily gathering nature’s bounty. Lacking the ability to store food in cans or freezers, however, they mostly store it in their own bodies, as fat. The fruits of fall are especially important in the diet of most animals.
Botanically speaking, “fruit” is a very broad term, encompassing more than we generally envision, because a fruit is the product of a pollinated flower, or a plant’s mature ovary, and therefore houses the seeds. Typical fruits are not only the fleshy fruits such as grapes, raspberries, or plums, but also those that are dry and woody or papery, such as milkweed pods, maple samaras, and oak acorns.
Anything with seeds inside is a botanical fruit, so peas, beans, tomatoes, squashes and, yes, pumpkins are technically considered fruits. Nutritionists, however, have a different opinion, considering sweet fruits as fruits and non-sweet or green fruits as vegetables. So take your pick--are you a botanist or nutritionist? Here is a fun blog about all those weird fruits.
The function of a fruit is to protect and disperse the seed, which is the plant’s offspring. Plants cannot move, and so their seed, like their pollen, must be moved for them, usually by wind or animals. Many familiar plants, such as dandelion, willows, and milkweeds, have small seeds with tufts of gossamer that are dispersed by wind. The fruits of tulip-trees and maples have little wings, and twirl like the blade of a helicopter as they are blown from the parent tree. Other fruits, such as stick-tights, beggar’s ticks, and cocklebur are covered with Velcro-like hooks that catch in the fur or feathers of animals. All these fruits are designed for passive or accidental transport, with structural modifications that enhance their ability to catch in fur or travel on the wind. And, yes, they are botanical fruits even though they are dry and papery. Here is more on technical fruits.
Other fruits are designed to actively attract animals for their seed dispersal. These fleshy fruits are edible fruits that enclose the seeds. The seeds are dispersed when animals feed on the fruits, either by swallowing the seed or discarding it after they have carried it somewhere else. Seeds that are swallowed must be small and protected so as to survive passage through a gut, but will be deposited with a nice load of fertilizer when the animal defecates. The germination of some seeds is actually enhanced by exposure to acid, such as that in a stomach, because it weakens the very tough seed coat.
Some seeds, however, are not designed to be eaten even if the flesh of the fruit is. Peaches, for instance, enclose the single seed per fruit with a very hard seed coat, and further protect it with a form of cyanide to make the seed inedible. Almonds, by the way, are close relatives of peaches in which a genetic mutation prevents cyanide production, rendering the seed edible.
The urban myth that swallowing an apple seed will kill you is based on fact, but blown out of proportion. Apple seeds produce cyanide when digested, but their seed coat is so impermeable that they pass through the digestive system undamaged and undigested. Swallowing a few whole apple seeds is, therefore, not a problem. Your body can even detoxify the small amount of cyanide released should a seed or two be damaged. Crushing a cupful of apple seeds (or peach seeds or cherry seeds) so that the protective seed coat is breached and then swallowing them could result in poisoning and is not a bet worth taking. Just stick to eating the fruit and leave the seeds alone--that is what the plant is hoping you will do!
Portions excerpted from my book, "Mountain Nature: A Seasonal Natural History of the Southern Appalachians."